I’ve been assured Mellie hasn’t been back since the night I fucking kissed her. Still, I pick her lock and let myself into her apartment.
Striding through the dark, silent space, I creep into her bedroom, my eyes glued to the bed.
Sure enough, the lass is curled up under the comforter. Kneeling beside the bed, I carefully pick up her hand, turning it in mine and examining the palm. Her wounds are healing nicely. She should be back at Oracle by the end of the week.
When I came into the room, she was tossing and turning, sleeping badly. Now I am holding her hand, she’s calmed down and is sleeping peacefully.
I’m a fucking sucker for punishment, so I kneel for a while longer, holding her hand as she sleeps, stroking my fingers over her healing palm. I fight the urge itching at my fingers to stroke the hair away from her face. I don’t want to wake her.
Eventually, I get up, heading for the door. The lass sighs, tossing again in her sleep as I reach the doorway. My feet take an involuntary step back toward her, but I grit my teeth and force myself to leave the bedroom.
I move back through the apartment, checking the windows to ensure they are secure. When I examine the kitchen, I notice the blender is broken. Picking it up, I look it over, but it’s completely fucked.
A frown crosses my face. Mellie has a smoothie for breakfast each morning, and she can’t do that with a broken blender. I collect it, letting myself out of the apartment and striding down the street.
There is an all-night superstore four blocks away. The young lad in the appliances section blinks in surprise as I shove the broken blender at him.
“I need the same model.”
He frowns, nodding and hurrying away to find one, unable to look me in the eye. It’s not uncommon, so I let him go. Mellie can look me in the eye. So can the lads in my crew. I don’t need anyone else to.
My menacing demeanor pays off, and the lad is back within ten minutes, clutching an identical blender in its box. Taking it from him, I move through to the cashier, striding back to Mellie’s apartment.
The place is still silent, and I unbox and set up the new blender by the light of my phone. Letting myself out, I climb into my SUV, heading home to get a few hours of sleep before returning to Oracle to break this Bulgarian fucker.
The Bulgarian looks terrified when I enter the room. From the smell of him, he’s emptied his bladder overnight.
Ignoring the begging, which starts as soon as I step into the room, I carefully take off my gray button-down shirt, fold it in a locker I keep, and pull on a white T-shirt. I prefer to work in white. Bleach gets the bloodstains out better than anything else I’ve found.
Dressed, I cross to him, snatching up a pair of pliers. He’s a tough fucker, and doesn’t do much as I remove his teeth one by one apart from calling my mammy every name under the sun.
Too bad for him that insulting my mammy isn’t going to rile me up like he thinks. She was a crazy woman, and the world is a better place without her in it. Maybe if he had gotten his hands on her and done half the shite he’s talking, everyone who knew her would have been better off.
Using the small metal pipe, I beat the soles of his feet until he’s crying like a lass, as all the bones broken. Then, for good measure, I carve them up a bit.
Once I take the shears to his hands, he’s ready to talk. Before he can say anything, I remove the pinky and ring finger of his right hand to match the damage they did to Tiggy.
He screams through the removal of all eight of his fingers until all he has left are his thumbs. Now he’s finally talking.
“Please,” he sobs. “They approached us. They told us to take out the occupants of that car. We didn’t know that it was the Irish in there. We just did what we were asked.Please.”
Who the fuck accepts a job to take out a car without asking who might be in it? Surely they had to contemplate some backlash.
They’re not professional hitmen. The half-arsed, amateur job they did on Connor’s car is evidence of that. No wonder it only took me two days to track him down. I’m not exactly working with a genius.
I abandon the shears, grabbing a knife and stabbing it into his side as the door cracks open and Seamus strides in.
The Bulgarian looks over in relief, a smirk crossing my lips at the sight. That’s not the look that should be on his face. Seamus wants him to suffer. You don’t go after his wife and die a quick death.
I remove my knife and grin at Seamus as he asks for an update. Turning to the Bulgarian, who is still looking at Seamus like he expects mercy to come from that corner of the room, I raise my eyebrows.
“This is Seamus Fitzpatrick. It’s his wife ye went after.”
The Bulgarian loses what little color he has in his face, unable to tear his eyes off Seamus’s face, a mask of unforgiving rage.
The man starts babbling, answering Seamus’s questions like he thinks it will be his ticket to an easy death. He’s not wrong. When he has nothing else to say, Seamus nods stiffly to me, my knife darting out and opening his throat.
Seamus stalks out as I grab a sheet, untying the body and wrapping it up. I check the time on the clock beside the door. Still early. I won’t encounter anyone I shouldn’t if I leave now.